If you’re inclined to think of this as likely structural vote rigging, I’ve seen commentary on it from credible people saying both that aging touch screens can misbehave like this (without tampering, that is), and that it’s likely a badly calibrated screen, easy for poll workers to fix. One post said the machine had been taken out of service.

I do, however, think that small Curacao has had better organized and more competently executed elections than the country supposed to be democracy #1. That’s not looking at the candidates or issues, of course, just the election itself.

A touch screen that out of whack in the most technologically advanced nation in the world is inexcusable.

Every single time I voted in the Netherlands, every single time, I did not have to wait AT ALL at the polling station. No matter what time of day I went voting. There’s no early voting at all in the Netherlands, everybody votes on election day. Percentage of the population bothering to vote isn’t all that different from the US, so, really, what’s up with those lines? How dysfunctional is this election process?

I think P.J. O’Rourke once said that people don’t line up around the block to vote for the status quo. He was being snarky about some poor country. Clearly he was wrong.

Desiato on
November 7th, 2012 at 20:06:

@Bill L: I’m missing what indicates that it was not a calibration problem. The post says (or has been updated to say): [Update: Mother Jones is now reporting that PA Dept of State officials are saying “they recalibrated the machine, did a test run, and put it back online.”